?King Fahd National Library has announced that work has started on a digital library project to be implemented by Naseej, the Arab world s leading provider of Knowledge Management Solutions. According to an agreement signed by the two parties, Naseej will set up a library digitalization lab to convert 5,000 books and 10,000 theses to digital format over 36 months.
The project is part of King Fahd National Library s efforts to develop an integrated information system in line with its objective to serve all researchers and others interested in the field of electronic information sources.
Naseej envisages that the digital library will contain a large amount of specialized digital library science content, in addition to the library s collections of books, other publications, and theses.
Naseej will utilize the latest digitizing techniques to achieve the highest quality standards in line with international standards of digitization. Furthermore, to ensure speed of execution while preserving the historically valuable original collections, Naseej will employ the latest conservation and retrieval methods. Modern systems of digitization are characterized by enormous storage capacity, which gives users easy access to stored documents.
Engineer Abdullah Al-Tarifi, Executive Vice President of Naseej, commented: The facilitation of scientific and technical research at the national and regional levels is a cornerstone of this ambitious project. It will increase opportunities for researchers and academics to access as quickly as possible, and to benefit from, scientific information held both in the Kingdom and abroad. In addition, King Fahd National Library s portal provides students, researchers, bodies, groups and institutions from all sectors of the State with easy access to the library s Arabic content.
The digital library project is a qualitative leap in that it is being implemented through activation of an integrated information system that aims to use digitization solutions to automate, organize, control, and document intellectual production sources. It also enables the public, both at home and abroad, to be informed of everything that is published within the Kingdom. In addition, the system maintains the heritage of rare manuscripts, books and other publications, selected documents, and other materials related to Arabic and Islamic civilization.
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